Logo Cuban Missile Crisis

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.

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  • About the Crisis »
    • Original Historic Sources »
      • Videos
      • Photo Gallery
      • Audio
      • Key Documents
    • Frequently Asked Questions
    • Dramatis Personae »
      • The Leaders
      • ExComm
      • Other U.S. Players
      • USSR
  • Lessons »
    • Presidents
    • Policymakers
    • Scholars
    • Intelligence
    • Other Observers
    • Lessons in Video
  • For Educators »
    • Tools for Teachers
    • Reading Lists
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    • Media Depictions
  • Nuclear Danger Today »
    • Nuclear Terrorism
    • Collapse of Global Nuclear Order
    • Further Reading

Photo Gallery

Home Page // About the Crisis // Original Historic Sources // Photo Gallery

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  • JFK and Kruschev

    Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna Meeting, 06/03/1961 – 06/04/1961. Photograph of President

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  • JFK Meets Gromyko

    President John F. Kennedy Meets with Andrei Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs

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  • JFK and RFK confer

    3 October, 1962 President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy confer.

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  • JFK in oval office

    The Loneliest Job (JFK in oval office) [George Tames/New York Times/Redux]

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  • JFK’s Decisions Doodle

    President Kennedy’s Decisions Doodle.[ARC Identifier 192810; Item from Collection JFK-JFKPP: John F.

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  • JFK Missiles Doodle

    JFK Doodle with Words Missiles, Missiles, Missiles, 10/25/1962. [ARC Identifier 595725; Item

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  • JFK, Rusk, and McNamara

    October 29 1962 Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security

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  • Atom bomb testing

    Atom bomb tested on Bikini Island in 1946. [ARC Identifier 6234446; Item

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  • Executive Committee

    October 29, 1962. Meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security

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  • Removal of missile erectors

    October 29, 1962: Low-level photography reveals Soviet removal of missile erectors and

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  • Adlai Stevenson at UN

    Ambassador Adlai Stevenson shows photographic evidence at the United Nations, October 25,

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  • Quarantine Proclamation

    President Kennedy signs Cuba quarantine proclamation, 23 October 1962. Copyright Status: Public

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  • Site One at Guanajay

    October 23, 1962. Aerial Photograph of Intercontinental Range Ballistic Missile Launch Site

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  • Sagua la Grande

    October 23, 1962: U.S. Navy low-level photograph of Sagua la Grande MRBM

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  • JFK Announces Blockade

    President John F. Kennedy announcing the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba on

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  • First IRBM site

    October 17, 1962: U-2 photograph of first IRBM site found under construction.

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  • Reconnaissance Objectives

    October 5, 1962: CIA chart of “reconnaissance objectives in Cuba.” [National Security

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  • Map of Missile Range in Cuba

    Map of Missile Range in Cuba (1). CIA briefing board for JFK

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  • Map of Missile Range in Cuba

    Map of Missile Range in Cuba (2). [ARC Identifier 595351; Item from

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  • Soviet Ship Departing Cuba

    Photograph of the Soviet Ship Ansov Departing from Cuba During the Cuban

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